End Run

In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats snarled at each other across the Amerasia case like nervous football teams determined to fight it out through the line if it took all election season. Indiana's Homer Capehart, backed by 20 other Republican Senators, demanded that the Senate Judiciary Committee open a brand-new, full-dress investigation of the Justice Department's handling of the case in 1945. Maryland's long-jawed Millard Tydings promptly accused Capehart's team of being offside. Tydings' own special Foreign Relations subcommittee was already looking into Amerasia, he said; the Capehart resolution amounted to a vote of no confidence before the committee had even wound up its hearings.

Out of the corner of their eyes, Republicans and Democrats alike had been watching breathlessly as a "runaway" federal grand jury, on its own, summoned Amerasia witnesses to Manhattan in high secrecy. Last week, after 16 hurried days of sifting--admittedly too little time for an exhaustive inquiry--the jury ended its 18-month term by deciding that the Government's investigations and prosecution of the Amerasia case had been above reproach. The jury was shocked that the Communist-line magazine should have had in its office 1,700 Government documents, all classified and some top secret, but it concluded that any delays in arresting the six Amerasia suspects were understandable, and that the prosecution of only two defendants was all that could be expected under the circumstances. The real trouble, said the jury, lay in the "entirely inadequate" safeguarding of Government property, and in defective espionage laws. "If laws governing espionage had been different," wrote the grand jurors, ". . . the prosecution procedure would have been entirely different." This was naturally cheering news to Quarterback Tydings and his sweating Democrats, but nobody thought the ball game was over yet.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.